^ if BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 

Serial No. 470: General Series, No. 306. 



EXTENSION DIVISION 



The University of Wisconsin 

General Information and Welfare 
THE SOCIAL CENTER 

A MEANS OF COMMON UNDERSTANDING 

All address delivered by Hon. Woodrow Wilson, Gov- 
ernor of New Jersey, before the First National Confer- 
ence on Civic and Social Center Development, at Madison,. 
Wis., October 25. 1911. 

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December, 191 I 



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THE SOCIAL CENTER 

A MEANS OF COMMON UNDERSTANDING 

•An address delivered by Hon. Woodrow Wilson, Governor of 
New Jersey, before the First National Conference on Civic and 
Social Center Development, at iSIadison. Wis., October 25. 1911. 



I do not feel that I have deserved the honor of standino- 
here upon this occasion to make "wliat has been conrte- 
ously called the principal address, because five months 
ago I did not know anything- about this movement. I 
have taken no active part in it, and I am not going- to as- 
sume, as those who have preceded me have assumed, that 
you kno\v Avhat the movement is. I Avant, if for no other 
purpose than to clarify my own thinking, to state as 
briefly as possible, what the movement is. 

The object of the movement is to make the school- 
house the civic center of the community, at anv rate in 

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such coiiununitios as are supplied with no other phace of 
conunoii resort. 

Ready for Use— The Means of Concerting 
Common Life 

It is obvious that the sclioolhouse is in most communi- 
ties used onlj' during certain hour's of the day, those 
hours when the rest of the community is busily engaged 
in bread-winning work. It occurred to the gentlemen 
Avho started this movement that inasmuch as the school- 
houses belonged to the community it was perfectly legiti- 
mate that the community should use them for its own en- 
tertainment and schooling when the young people were^ 
not occupying them. And that, tlierefore, it would be a 
good idea to have there all sorts of gatherings, for social 
purposes, for purposes of entertainment, for purposes of 
conference, for any legitimate thing that might bring 
neighbors and friends together in the schoolhouses. That, 
I understand it, in its simplest terms is the civic center 
movement — that the schoolhouses might be made a place 
of meeting — in short, where by meeting each other the 
people of a community might know each other, and by 
knowing each other might concert a common life, a com- 
mon action. 

Spontaneous Development 

The study of the civic center is the study of the spon- 
taneous life of communities. What you do is to open the 
schoolhouse and light it in the evening and say: "Here 
is a place where you are welcome to come and do anything 
that it occurs to you to do." 

And the interesting thing about this movement is that 
a great many things have occurred to people to do in the 
schoolhouse, things social, things educational, things po- 
litical, — for one of the reasons why i)olitics took on a new 

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complexion in the city in which this movement originated 
was that the people who could go into the schoolhouses at 
niglit knew wliat was goino- on in that city and insisted 
upon talking about it, and the minute they began talking 
about it, many things became impossible, for there are 
scores of things that must be put a stop to in our politics 
that will stop the moment they are talked of where men 
will listen. The treatment for bad politics is exactly the 
modern treatment for tu1)erculosis — it is exposure to the 
open air. 

Now you have to begin at the root of the matter in or- 
der to understand what it is you intend to serve by this 
movement. You intend to serve the life of communities, 
the life that is there, the life that you cannot create, the 
life to which you can only g'ive release and opportunity; 
and wherein does that life consist? That is the question 
that interests me. There can be no life in a community 
so long as its parts are segregated and separated. It is 
just as if you separated the organs of the human body and 
then expected them to produce life. You must open wide 
the channels of sympathy and communication between 
them, you must make channels for the tides of life; if you 
clog them anj^where, if you stop them anywhere, why 
then the processes of disease set in, which are the proc- 
esses of misunderstanding, which are the disconnections 
between the spiritual impulses of different sections of men. 

Common Center Essential to Community Life 

The verj' definition of community is a body of men who 
have things in common, who are conscious that they have 
things in common, who judge those common things from 
a single point of view, namely, the point of view of gen- 
eral interest. Such a thing as a community is unthink- 
able, therefore, unless you have close communication; 
there must be a vital inter-relationship of parts, there 

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must be a fusion, there must be a coordination, there must 
be a free intercourse, there must be guch a contact as will 
constitute union itself before you will have the true course 
of tlie wholesomt' blood throughout the body. 

Therefore, when you analyze some of our communities 
you will see just how necessary it is to get their parts to- 
gether. Take some of our great cities for example. Do 
you not realize by common gossip even, the absolute dis- 
connection of wnat we call their residential sections from 
the I'est of the city? Isn't it singular that while human 
beings live all over a city, we pick out a part, a place 
where there are luxurious and well-appointed houses and 
call that the residential section? As if nobody else lived 
anj^where in that city. That is the place where the most 
disconnected part and in some instances the most useless 
part of the community lives. There men do not know 
their next-door neighbors; there men do not want to know 
their next-door neighbors; there is no bond of sympathy; 
there is no bond of knowledge or common acquaintance- 
ship. 

I am not speaking of these things to impeach a class, 
for I know of no just way in which to impeach a class. 

It is necessary that such portions of the community 
should be linked with the other portions; it is necessary 
that simple means shoixld be found by which by an inter- 
change of points of view we may get together, for the 
whole process of modern life, the whole process of mod- 
ern politics, is a process by which we must exclude mis- 
understandings, exclude hostilities, exclude deadly rival- 
ries, make men ULuderstand other men's interests, bring all 
men into common counsel, and so discover what is the 
common interest. 

That is the in'oblem of modern life which is so special- 
ized that it is almost devitalized, so disconnected that the 
tides of life will not How. 

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Means to the Unity of Communities 

My interest in this movement, as it lias been described 
to me, has been touched with enthusiasm because I see in 
it a channel for the restoration of the unity of commun- 
ities. Because I am tohl that things have already hap- 
pened which bear promise of this very thing. 

I was told what is said to be a typical story of a very 
fine lady, a woman of very fine natural parts, but very 
fastidious, whose automoV)ile happened to be stalled one 
night in front of an open schoolhouse where a meeting 
was going on over Avhich her seamstress was presiding. 
She was induced by some ac«iuaintances of hers whom 
she saw going into the building, to go in, and was at 
first filled with disdain; she didn't like the looks of some 
of the people, there was too much mixture of the sort she 
didn't care to associate with — an employe of her own was 
presiding — but she was obliged to stay a little while, it 
was the most comfortable place to stay while her automo- 
bile was repaired, and before she could get away she had 
been touched with the generous contagion of the place. 
Here were peoi)le of all sorts talking about things that 
were interesting, that revealed to her things that she had 
never dreamed of before with regard to the vital com- 
mon interests of persons whom she had always thought 
unlike herself, so that the community of the human heart 
was revealed to her, the singleness of human life. 

Worth Any Effort to Promote 

Now if this thing does that, it is worth any efi:'ort to 
promote it. If it will do that, it is the means by which 
we shall create communities. And nothing else will pro- 
duce liberty — you cannot have liberty where men do not 
Avant the same liberty, you cannot have it where they are 
not in sympathy with one another, you' cannot have it 
where they do not understand one another, vou cannot 

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have it when they are not seekinf>- common things bj' com- 
mon means, you simply cannot have it; we must study 
the means hy which these things are produced. 

In the first place, don't you see that you produce com- 
munities by creating common feeling? I know that a 
great emphasis is put upon the mind, in oiir day, and as 
a university man I should perhaps not challenge the 
supremacy of the intellect, but I have never been con- 
vinced that mind was really monarch in our daj-, or in any 
day that I have yet read of, or, if it is monarch, it is one 
of the modern monarchs that rules and reigns but does 
not govern. 

Common Feeling Essential to Free Government 

What really controls our action is feeling. We are 
governed by the passions and the most that we can man- 
age by all our social and i)olitical endeavors is that the 
handsome passions shall be in the majority' — the passion 
of sympathy, the passion of justice, the passion of fair 
dealing, the passion of unselfishness, (if it may be elevated 
into a passion). If you can once see that a working ma- 
jority is obtained for the handsome passions, for the feel- 
ings that draw us together, rather than for the feelings 
that separate us, then you have laid the foundation of a 
community and a free government and, therefore, if you 
can do^iothing else in the community center than draw 
men together so that they will have common feeling, you 
will have set forward the cause of civilization and the 
cause of human freedom. 

As a basis of the conamon feeling you must have a mu- 
tual comprehension. The fundamental truth in modern 
life, as I analj^ze it, is a profound ignorance. I am not 
one of those who challenge the promoters of special in- 
terests on the ground that they are malevolent, that thej' 
are bad men; I challenge their leadership on the ground 

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that they are io-norant men, that whcMi you have absorbed 
yourself in a particular business thi'ough half your life, 
you have no other point of view than the point of view of 
that business and that, therefore, you are dis(|ualitied by 
ignorance from <;iving counsel as to the common interests. 
A witty English writer once said: "If you chain a man's 
head to a ledger and knock off something from his wages 
every time he stops adding up, you can't expect him to 
have enlightened views about the antipodes." Simply, if 
you immerse a man in a given undertaking, no matter how 
big that undertaking is, and keep him immersed for half 
a life time, you can't exjoect him to see any horizon, you 
can't expect him to see human life steadily or see it whole. 

Means to Liberal Education 

I once made this statement that a university was in- 
tended to make young people just as unlike their fathers 
as possible. By which I do not mean anything disrespect- 
ful to their fathers, but merely this, by the time a man is 
old enough to have children in college, his point of view 
is apt to have become so specialized that they would bet- 
ter be taken away from him and put in a place where their 
views of life will be regeneralized and they will be discon- 
nected from the family and connected with the world. 
That, I understand to be the function of education, of the 
liberal education. 

Now a kind of liberal education must underlie every 
wholesome political and social process, the kind of liberal 
education Avhich connects a man's feeling and his compre- 
hension with the general run of mankind, which discon- 
nects him from the special interests and marries his thought 
to the common interests, of great communities and of great 
cities and of great states and of great nations, and, if pos- 
sible, with that brotherhood of man that transcends the 
boundaries of nations themselves. 

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Those are the horizons to my mind of this social center 
movement, that they are goint>- to unite the feelings and 
clarify the comprehension of communities, of bodies of 
men who draw together in conference. 

Conference Always Modifies and Improves 
Thought 

I would like to ask if this is not the experience of every 
person here wh.0 has ever acted in anj^ conference of any 
kind. Did you ever go out of a conference with exactly the 
the same views with Avhichyou went in? If you did, I am. 
sorry for you, you must be thought- tight. For my part I can 
testify that I never carried a scheme into a conference with- 
out having it profoundly modified by the criticism of the 
other men in the conference and without recognizing" 
when I came out that the product of the common council 
bestowed upon it was very much superior to any private 
thought that might have been used for its development, 
The processes of attrition, the contributions to consensus 
of minds, the compromises of thought create those general 
movements which are the streams of tendency and the 
streams of development. 

Will Make Easier Solution of Great Problems 

And so it seems to me that what is going to be produced 
by this movement, — not all at once, by slow and tedious- 
stages, no doubt, but nevertheless very certainly in the 
end, — is in the first place a release of common forces now 
undiscovered, now somewhere banked up, and now some- 
where unavailable, the removal of barriers to the common 
understanding, the opening of mind to mind, the clari- 
fication of the air and the release in that clarified air of 
forces that can live in it, and just so certainly as you re- 
lease those forces you make easier the fundamental problem 
of modern society, which is the problem of accommodating 
the various interests in modern society to one another. 

[10] 



Adjustment Necessary to Liberty 

I useil to teach my classes in the university that liberty 
was a matter of adjustment and I was accustomed to illus- 
trate it in tliis way; when you have perfectly assembled 
the parts of a j^reat steam engine, for example, then when 
it runs, you say that it runs free; that means that the ad- 
justment is so i)erfect that the friction is reduced to a 
minimum, doesn't it, and the minute you twist anj- part 
out of alignment, the minute you lose adjustment, then 
there is a buckling up and the whole thing is rigid and 
useless. Now to my mind, that is the image of human 
liberty; the individual is free in proportion to his perfect 
accommodation to the whole, or to put it the other way, 
in projiortion to the perfect adjustment of the whole to 
his life and interests. 

Take another illustration; you are sailing a boat, when 
do you say that she is running free, when you have thrown 
her uj) into the wind? No, not at all. Everj' stick and 
stitch in her shivers and you say she is in irons; nature 
has grasped her and says: "You cannot go that way;" 
but let her fall off, let the sheet fill and see her run like a 
bird skimming the waters. Why is she freei' Because 
she has adjusted herself to the great force of nature that 
is brewed with the breath of the wind. She is free in 
proportion as she is adjusted, as she is obedient, and so 
men arj free in society in proportion as their interests are 
accommodated to one another, and that is the problem of 
liberty. 

Analysis Accomplished— Now Assembled 

Liberty as now expressed is unsatisfactory in this 
country and in other countries because there has not been 
a satisfactory adjustment and you cannot readjust the 
parts until you analyze them. Very well, we have anal- 
yzed them. Now this movement is intended to contrib- 

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ute to an effort to assemble tliein, brinj;- them together, 
let them look one another in the face, let them reckon 
with one another and then they will cooperate and not be- 
fore. 

You cannot bring- adjustment into play until you have 
got the consent of the parts to act together, and then when 
you have got the adjustment, when you have discovered 
and released those forces and they have accommodated 
themselves to each other, you have that control which is 
the sovereignty of the people. 

There is no sovereignty of the people if the several 
sections of the peo])le be at loggerheads with one another; 
sovereignty comes with cooperation, sovereignty conies 
"with mutual protection, sov^ereignty comes with the quick 
pulses of sympathy, sovereignty comes by a common im- 
pulse. 

You say and all men say that great political changes 
are impending in this country. Why do you say so? 
Because everjnvhere you go you find men expressing the 
same judgment, alive to the same circumstances, deter- 
mined to solve the problems hj acting together no matter 
what older bonds they may break, no matter what former 
prepossessions they may throw off, determined to get 
together and do the thing. 

Enlightened Control in Place of Management 

And so you know that changes are impending because 
Avhat was a body of scattered sentiment is now becoming 
a concentrated force, and so with sympathy and under- 
standing comes control, for, in place of this control of 
enlightened and sovereign opinions, we have had in the 
field of politics as elsewhere, the reign of management, 
and management is compounded of these two things, 
secrecy plus concentration. 

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You cannot manage a nation, you cannot manage the 
people of a state, you cannot manage a great population, 
you can manage only some central force; what you do, 
therefore, if you want to manage in politics or anywhere 
else is to choose a great single force or single gi'oup of 
forces, and then find some man or men sagacious and 
secretive enough to manage the business without being 
discovered. And that has been done for a generation in 
the United States. 

Now, the schoolhouse among .other things is going to 
break that up. Is it not signilicant that this thing is be- 
ing erected upon the foundation originally laid in 
America, where we saw from tlie first that the school- 
house and the church were to be the pillars of the Re- 
public? Is it not significant that as if by instinct we 
return to those sources of liberty undehled which we find 
in the common meeting place, in the place owned by 
everybody, in the place where nobody can be excluded, in 
the place to which everybody comes as by right? 

And so what' we are doing is simply to open what was 
shut, to let the light come in upon places that were dark, to 
substitute for locked doors, open doors, for it does not make 
any difference how many or how few come in provided 
anj'body who chooses may come in. So as soon as you 
have established that principle, you have openings, and 
these doors are open as if they were the flood gates of 
life. 

Faith In People Justified 

I do not wonder that men are exhibiting an increased 
confidence in the judgments of the people, because where- 
ever you give the people a chance such as this movement 
has given them in the schoolhouse, they avail themselves 
of it. This is not a false people, this is not a people 
guided by blind impulses, this is a people who want to 
think, who want to think right, whose feelings are based 

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upon .justice, wliose instincts are for fairness and for the 
light. 

So what I see in this movement is a x'ecovery of the 
constructive and creative genius of tlie American people, 
because the American people as a people are so far differ- 
ent from others in being able to produce new things, to 
create new things out of old. 

This Movement Fundamentally American 

I have often thought that we overlook the fact that the 
real sources of strength in the community come from the 
bottom. Do you find society renewing itself from the 
toi^:' Don't you iind society renewing itself from the 
ranks of unknown men? Do you look to the leading fam- 
ilies to go on leading you? Do you look to the ranks of 
the men already established in authority to contribute 
sons to lead the next generation? They may, sometimes 
they do, but you can't count on them; and what you are 
constantly depending on is the rise out of the ranks of un- 
known men, the discovery of men whom you had passed 
by, the sudden disclosure of capacity ^'ou had not dreamed 
of, the emergence of somebody from some place of which 
you had thought the least, of some man unanointed from 
on high, to do the thing that the generation calls for. 
Who Avould have looked to see Lincoln save a nation? Who 
that knew Lincoln when he was a lad and a youth and a 
young man — but all the Avhile there was springing up in 
him as if he were connected with the very soil itself, the 
sap of a nation, the vision of a great people, a sympathy 
so ingrained and intimate Avith the common run of men 
that he was like the People impersonated, sublimated, 
touched with genius. And it is to such sources that we 
must alwa.vs look. 

No man can calculate the courses of genius, no man can 
foretell the leadership of nations. And so we must see to 

[14] 



it that the bottom is left open, we must see to it that the 
:Soil of the common feeling* of the common consciousness 
is always fertile and unclogyed, for there can be no fruit 
unless the roots touch the rich sources of life. 

And it seems to me that the schoolhouses dotted here, 
there, and everywhere, over the great expanse of this na- 
tion, will some day prove to be the roots of that great 
tree of liberty which shall spread for the sustenance and 
protection of all mankind. 



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